Show us your set up in action at night.

[Mr Spock]

The Taks are out, just now. Look closely you can see a few stars already.

[Rallemikken]

8 minutes ago, Mr Spock said:

Look closely you can see a few stars already.

I've actually got an image of the season's first star, it happened to be Vega! Two days into what ClearOutside calls "Civil darkness" I was out at midnight and did my first run. I actually got the rig to guide! I live at 64 degrees up in Norway, and I can't do any decent AP until mid-september. During the closure of last season I've spent some bucks on a new 8" RC and an IMX294 color camera. When the first fits rolled inn, I was cocooned in a warm, fuzzy feeling, the star had well defined spikes from edge to egde, and those visible in the corners were round and even. Fingers crossed, may the next five weeks go by in a flash!

[Sunshine]

2 hours ago, Mr Spock said:

The Taks are out, just now. Look closely you can see a few stars already.

The only stars I see are those Taks!

[Mircea]

All ingredients: night, setup, action.

This is me , last night, while observing Helix Planetary Nebula with the Sky Watcher 250mm Dobsonian from one of our dark sky location.

Picture taken by my friend Armand with iphone. As you can see, the hand held phone was able to record some stars of Sagittarius , Aquarius and Capricornus.

The telescope in the background is Armand's equatorially mounted Newtonian of 130mm aperture. Small but very good.

Mircea

 

Edited August 7 by Mircea

[Sunshine]

On 28/07/2016 at 12:45, DaveS said:

Not the whole set up, but my game-pad covered in frost in Dec '14. Combination of flash and the red desk lamp.

 

Just found another photo from the previous October

 

And the gamepad is for?

[bosun21]

1 hour ago, Sunshine said:

And the gamepad is for?

Usually for moving the mount.

[DaveS]

Yup, for moving the mount before I had fully automated plate solving and goto.

[Vroobel]

It's a great night, despite some clouds. My Canon 6D captures the Perseids while my main setup captures M31. 2.30 am. 

 

 

Edited August 13 by Vroobel

[DirkSteele]

The Baker Street Irregular Astronomers ran a Perseid event on Primrose Hill last night. Close to 100 people at the peak I believe. Took the APM LZOS 105 to show some sights between meteors.

 

Constantly pointing the telescope, I ended up seeing zero meteors!

[OK Apricot]

Ah, why not. One from the other night while shooting NGC6888 🙂

[bosun21]

I've got the 180 Maksutov out cooling for several hours before dark. I'm going to be doing some visual and imaging Saturn with my newly acquired ASI585MC. I may have a look at Jupiter and Mars as well if I can stay awake.

 

 

Edited August 16 by bosun21
Add photo.

[Steve Ward]

12 minutes ago, bosun21 said:

I've got the 180 Maksutov out cooling for several hours before dark. I'm going to be doing some visual and imaging Saturn with my newly acquired ASI585MC. I may have a look at Jupiter and Mars as well if I can stay awake.

 

 

I thought about doing the same but my seeing here has been diabolical for weeks so I'm saving myself from the frustration , I hope things are steadier for you down that way ... ☺️

[Saganite]

After a very long hiatus I made the effort on Monday, 2am to dawn ,to observe the Jupiter/Mars conjunction and took in a number of old favourites, mainly to test the Vixen ED115S, having got it at the Practical Astronomy Show earlier this year, and having no real opportunity to trial it, for various reasons.  It proved of course, being  a Vixen, to be utterly superb, so I am eager tonight for more of the same ,....

Edited August 16 by Saganite

[PeterStudz]

1 hour ago, bosun21 said:

I've got the 180 Maksutov out cooling for several hours before dark. I'm going to be doing some visual and imaging Saturn with my newly acquired ASI585MC. I may have a look at Jupiter and Mars as well if I can stay awake.

 

Good luck… I’ll be out too. There’s quite a gap between Saturn and Mars/Jupiter getting to a decent height so if I get bored/run out of other targets, I might take an in-between kip in a sleeping bag on our garden sofa 😀

[M40]

Well the cloudmagnet is out with the plan to do a bit of collimation work tonight, but, look at those clouds charging my way 🤦‍♂️

 

 

[bosun21]

2 hours ago, M40 said:

Well the cloudmagnet is out with the plan to do a bit of collimation work tonight, but, look at those clouds charging my way 🤦‍♂️

 

 

Where did you buy the rings from? I have fitted an electric focuser on mine but I intend to fit a Steeltrack and rings with a losmandy plate in the near future. I hope the skies stayed clear for you.

[M40]

10 hours ago, bosun21 said:

Where did you buy the rings from? I have fitted an electric focuser on mine but I intend to fit a Steeltrack and rings with a losmandy plate in the near future. I hope the skies stayed clear for you.

The tube rings are from orion optics, not cheap, but they were the only ones I found. They are a loose fit so I used a thick leather belt cut to size between ring and ota and it works a treat. You will need to remove the dovetail to fit the rings so you will need to remove the corrector plate as the nuts within the ota are not captured. Removing the corrector plate is an easy task as it will fit right back in the same position and not affect collimation. Mark the corrector plate before removal so it goes back in the same location. Check the collimation before you start so you know what you have done has not changed anything.

I flocked mine at the same time so I had to remove the mirror, which did affect collimation. Collimation on mine is "ok" but I think I can do better. The ocal3 is not a lover of the focal length of the skymax180 and due to the frustrations of patchy clouds, the next plan is to use a reducer with the ocal3 and see how it goes. 

The steeltrack is a great mod together with an eaf of some sort, completely removes shakey hand syndrome at high power. All the best.

[SwiMatt]

Giving some love to my ultra simple binocular setup for tonight session. Amazing if you are hoping to break your neck.

[Deadlake]

On 13/08/2024 at 06:27, DirkSteele said:

The Baker Street Irregular Astronomers ran a Perseid event on Primrose Hill last night. Close to 100 people at the peak I believe. Took the APM LZOS 105 to show some sights between meteors.

 

Constantly pointing the telescope, I ended up seeing zero meteors!

Is the Sightron any stronger than the ScopeTech mount?

I would have thought the mount would have been wobbling under the weight of the LZOS 105 mm!

[DirkSteele]

1 hour ago, Deadlake said:

Is the Sightron any stronger than the ScopeTech mount?

I would have thought the mount would have been wobbling under the weight of the LZOS 105 mm!

Indeed. It was too much. I wanted to try it but the scope loaded up is more than 7kg and the mount was not happy. I switched out to the Tele Optic Ercole shortly after that photo.

[paul mc c]

Old 9.5" imaging "just for the craic ".

[Vroobel]

 

Wow, surprisingly clear night, so the main setup continues the M31 mosaic while the small one looks at... 😊

 

[WolfieGlos]

An incredibly clear night, here she is all setup and ready to continue imaging.
Possibly the best guiding I’ve ever had and the Milky Way is visible overhead tonight. Even had the binos out tonight for some observing.

Although I have been hit by dew, been so used to the summer months it caught me totally off guard, so dew straps are now powered up and keeping her warm 👍

[Sunshine]

9 minutes ago, WolfieGlos said:

An incredibly clear night, here she is all setup and ready to continue imaging.
Possibly the best guiding I’ve ever had and the Milky Way is visible overhead tonight. Even had the binos out tonight for some observing.

Although I have been hit by dew, been so used to the summer months it caught me totally off guard, so dew straps are now powered up and keeping her warm 👍

Wonderful setup!

[Les Ewan]

A lot of cloud about and working later so spent a hour doing some star hoping with my grab and go Skywatcher Astrolux 76mm Newtonian. It didn't take long for the dew to attack after the recent rain.😩 In the cloud gaps it was quite transparent so got some nice views of the Pleiades,Double Cluster,theGamma Arietis double star.

The Astrolux's tiny mirror really punches above its weight with binaries.

Even managed to locate the Ring Nebula and make out the ring structure using averted vision.Not bad for optics you could fit into a pocket!.

The image shows my Astrolux trained on the Andromeda Galaxy🙂

All the observations were made using the supplied 25mm achromat Reverse Kellner